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Los Pacaminos at the Ivy House, 14th March 2014 – photos

For those who read my interview with ‘the man’ last week (don’t panic, you can catch up here), you might be wondering how it all went down when Paul Young and Los Pacaminos came to the Ivy House to play their gig.

Well, it was great fun. The Ivy House was packed, the excitement in the air was palpable and the crowd was a mixture of Pacaminos newbies (like me) and followers who knew every word and every hand clap. I asked one man next to me if he was a regular and he pointed mock-accusingly at his very quiet missus (but it was him who was swaying and looking dreamy and singing along very loudly).

The music was familiar but not predictable. They did covers but it wasn’t all ‘La Bamba’. They did songs such as ‘Don’t Make Me Wait, Senorita’, ‘Little Sister’, ‘Highway Patrol’ and ‘The Tequila Song’ – as you know from the interview, these guys love tequila, so at intervals they had various ‘tequila babes’ bringing them tequila shots on a tray. And you wondered why these 50-something musicians are in this band!

Paul Young has to be the main draw, but this group is not just about Paul. It is very much a team affair and the long term relationship between band members which Paul talked about in our interview really comes across. Their fun is infectious. Paul does sing some solos but many of the band members do, and Jamie Moses plays a great ‘sidekick’ role on stage. We all loved the pedal steel guitar (played wonderfully by Melvin Duffy), which really gave the music that proper Americana sound.

The pedigree of the band members is amazing. Look at any of their biographies and each one has played with the major musicians of our time.

But (of course) we all loved Paul.

I stood right there in front of him, basically a metre away in that perfectly sized venue and I had a good old go at practising my live music/dim lighting photography. Not always successful but at least through the lens you couldn’t see me gawking so much. How odd really to see my teen hero again 30 years later. As the ‘joke’ goes, he’s not that Young anymore. But then again, neither are any of us.

I have whittled down the photos (believe it or not) for those of you who are interested, and disguised the dodgy editing with the circle effect, but if you do wish to see any full size photo please just click onto it.

Credit: the one with me in it was taken by the lovely Jay Alix @JayAlixPhotos.

Apparently Los Pacaminos will be returning to the Ivy House in the next few months. You coming?